How Would State’s New Minimum Wage Law Affect Pasadena’s Just-Passed City-Wide Wage Ordinance?

 

Pasadena’s new city-wide minimum wage ordinance is a “bigger and better” rendering of the state legislature’s version passed by the State Assembly yesterday and now expected to go before the State Senate. The State’s version is expected to have no impact on people employed in Pasadena.

“Specifically, there is no language in the State measure which would invalidate local or county minimum wage ordinances,” said Pasadena Assistant City Manager Julie A. Gutierrez. “Presumably, the new state minimum wage would be a `floor,’ and cities and counties would be free to adopt minimum wages at a higher level.”

Secondly, according to Gutierrez, Pasadena’s minimum wage ordinance provides for a steeper increase in the minimum wage than SB-3, which will now go the State Senate, and which Gov. Jerry Brown has promised to sign.

Basically, in the case of Pasadena’s ordinance, which was unanimously approved on March 14, the new wage increase would begin in July with a minimum wage of $10.50. It would then climb every year to 2018, when it would be $13.25.

The impact of the ordinance on the local economy would then be reviewed by the City Council in February, 2019, for continuing on to its eventual goal of $15 an hour in 2020. Future raises beyond 2020 would be indexed to annual cost of living adjustments.

Nonprofit corporations with 26 or more employees may qualify for a deferral rate schedule as long as they can show proof that they fulfill certain conditions that will be clarified in a set of procedures which will be prepared by the City Manager’s office.

By contrast, the bill passed by the California State Assembly yesterday would not kick in until January, 2017 and calls for smaller incremental wage increases over several years longer than Pasadena’s ordinance.

The California bill could create the highest state-mandated minimum wage in the nation – $15 an hour by 2022.

The assembly passed the bill a day after Gov. Jerry Brown sent it to the legislature, announcing it was the result of a deal reached Saturday by state legislators and labor union representatives. The California bill will now go to the state senate for consideration.

“If Pasadena can pass a minimum wage law, then it says that the public opinion is on the side of raising wages,” said Peter Dreier, chairman of the Urban and Environment Policy Department at Occidental College. “And in fact, the most recent national poll showed that 63 percent of the American public supports raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.”